B009XDDVN8 EBOK (43 page)

“It was a combination of everything,” said Ben, in my room at the Sea Queen Motel in Fort Lauderdale. He was sitting up now, his eyes closed as he told me the story. “The alcohol, the rocking of the boat, Derek’s smile, the relief I had felt when the loan was approved, the mouth of his girlfriend, the chance to be rich. I wanted to believe. And the closing on the loans that would save my life was still a week away; I had no choice but to believe.”

“Ben,” I said, shaking my head.

“And so I told him what he already knew. I told him that I was a pirate. And that, yes, I had taken the damn money.”

“Christ, Ben. What did he do?”

“He smiled at me,” said Ben, “and then he stood, lifted up the seat to grab us another beer. But instead of the bottle, he picked up the entire cooler and smashed it into my face.”

The next thing Ben knew he was lying on the floor of the boat, blood pouring onto the deck from his busted cheek as Derek methodically kicked the shit out of him.

“Try to blackmail me again, you son of a bitch, why don’t yous?” said Derek as the point of his shoe smacked Ben in the ribs. “I ought to cut your balls off and feed them to the barracuda.”

Ben didn’t cry out, didn’t fight back, even though Ben could have given him a fight. He just lay there and let Derek Grubbins do his worst. He felt he deserved everything, for thinking he could get something out that bastard, for admitting what we had done, for losing all his money in the first place. He just lay there and took it all and bled, hoping that the life would bleed right out of him. He thought Derek would throw him out of the boat, he thought Derek would leave him floating bloody in the ocean for the sharks. Maybe he was hoping for it, too.

But when Derek was finished, he coolly picked up a beer that had fallen onto the deck, opened it with an explosion of foam, took a long satisfied drink, and stepped back up into the cockpit. While Ben lay in a puddle of his own blood, Derek steered the
boat to shore. At some dock, not his own, he backed the Bayliner to a dead stop and told Ben to get the hell out of his boat, and without argument or complaint, Ben did just that. He climbed out on his hands and knees and rolled onto the splintering wood like a freshly rolled drunk.

And then Derek said, from the boat, “Don’t be late for the closing.”

“Closing?” said Ben.

“You better show the hell up,” said Derek. “I’ve got my finder’s fees to think about. But the cash you was taking away from the table, you’re not taking it away no more. Understand?”

And that’s the way it went down at the closing that saved Ben’s financial hide.

“What about Everfair?” I said while trying to get to the bottom of the sordid tale in my Sea Queen room.

“It’s a real deal,” said Ben. “It’s going up right now on the southwestern edge of the city. But he was never going to let me be a part of it. It was just a way to get me to spit out a confession.”

“Why didn’t you warn us? Why didn’t you let Augie know?”

“I could barely admit to myself what I had done, how could I admit it to you? And at the closing, when Derek acted like we were best friends again, I thought maybe that the beating he had given me would be the end of it. Weeks passed and our weekly calls were unchanged. And I felt like we had all gone through a gate and there was no more fear on the other side. I would have told you both that we were free of it all, except then I would have had to tell you how I knew, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t. So I kept it to myself. And then Augie didn’t call.”

“Christ.”

“And the next thing I heard was your message that Augie was dead and you were on the run. And I hoped you’d get away, J.J. I so wanted you to get away. Why didn’t you run like you told us you always would?”

“Love,” I said. “The oldest trap in the book.”

“I’ll do anything to get you out of this. Anything to get your daughter back.”

“You bet you will,” I said.

And then I looked at him, this huge bubble of a man, hollowed out by failure and loneliness, and the sight scared the hell out of me. He outweighed me by a good hundred pounds, was taller and wider and black as obsidian, but still it was like looking at a mirror. He was as bruised as I was, as fearful, as yearning for something he couldn’t quite identify, as scarred by what we had done together.

“It’s not just your fault, Ben,” I said. “We all screwed up, the three of us. When I went to check on Augie, one of his neighbors told me he had been crying at night by his pool.”

“Augie?”

“She told me he needed a friend, not someone who just flew in for a day here and there to make sure he was still alive and then flew out again. He needed you and me to be something we hadn’t been in decades. I didn’t see how sad that was until I heard your story. Because we all were struggling.”

“You?”

“I’ve lost my job, I’ve ruined my marriage, my life is a mess. And I felt like I had no one to turn to. Just like you felt. Just like Augie felt. How was it possible to have no one to turn to when we had each other?”

“We all screwed up so badly.”

“We thought there wouldn’t be a price to pay,” I said. “We thought we could get away unscathed. How wrong could we be?”

“What are we going to do, J.J.?”

“We’re going to forgive each other for everything. We’re going to be friends like we should have been all along.”

“And then what?”

“Tell me what you learned about Derek. What name is he going under?”

“Doug. Douglas Grayle.”

“Convenient. He didn’t even have to change his monogrammed towels. What does he do all day?”

“He works,” said Ben. “Either at his office or visiting the Everfair development site. But he kicks off about two, goes home to bang Lucille or take out the boat. He’s got himself a life.”

“That’s what I’m counting on. Will the girl remember you?”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s assume she will. I have to wait for some things to arrange themselves, but tomorrow, while Douglas Grayle is still at work, you’re going to take me to the house.”

“His house?”

“He sent his goons to Augie’s, he sent them to mine. We’re going to return the favor.”

“You bringing the gun?”

“No gun.”

“If we’re going up against Derek, you ought to bring the gun.”

“A guy once told me that if you pull a gun on a guy like Derek, he’ll make sure you need to use it. And if you use a gun against a guy like Derek, you’re not getting out alive.”

“Who told you that?”

“Tony Grubbins.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

“He’s changed.”

“People don’t change.”

“We have, for the worse. Tony maybe has for the better. If anything happens to me, call him. I’ll give you the number. He’ll know exactly what to do, he saved my life once already.”

“Tony? Jesus.”

“So I’m not bringing Derek a bullet, I’m bringing him an opportunity. A chance for us to move once and for all beyond the crap.”

“And if he doesn’t take it?”

“Plan A is a way for me to get my daughter back without a fuss, for Derek to pocket a hundred thou in cash, and for all of us
to live out the rest of our days in serene harmony, with the past buried in the fields of time behind us. Plan A is all about peace, prosperity, and sanity.”

“And plan B?”

“The opposite.”

T
HE PLAN WAS
to arrive at Derek Grubbins’s garish, Moorish-style house while he was still at work, bluff our way inside, make ourselves at home on the elaborate furnishings as we waited for the son of a bitch to show, maybe even hit a bit on the girl just for effect. The point was that when Derek finally returned to his mansion and saw us there with drinks in our hands and cigars in our teeth he’d know, viscerally, that we weren’t the only ones with something to lose. We wanted him to have no doubt that his house, his boat, his real-estate development, his whole second-chance life here, were on the line. I had spent the night working on the terms, on the threats, on my delivery. After fifteen years of peddling mortgages, one thing I knew was how to make a sale. And once Derek had a truer sense of the risks he was facing, then maybe we could work out an arm’s-length deal that would leave everyone alive.

At least that was the plan, until the front door opened.

The girl standing there was so young and fresh I was taken aback: bare feet, short-shorts, and sure, a mouth just like Ben had described, but still, not much older than my daughter. The sight of her made me think of Shelby, bound and gagged in the rear seat of some car, barreling south. So much for maybe hitting on the girl for effect. What I really wanted to do was give her a lecture and send her to her room.

I had called Caitlin that morning and the report was not promising. No word on my daughter. None. And the police were skeptical about the whole abduction story, assuming Shelby had simply run away to be with the boyfriend. She’s at that age, they told Caitlin. In fact, they were more interested in me than in my missing daughter. Why was I wanted for questioning by Virginia authorities? Why had I left the scene of an accident? Why was our house being ransacked? Where had I run off to? The more Caitlin relayed the scene in Kitty Hawk, the more I knew that if my daughter was coming home, it was up to me to make it happen.

“We’re looking for Doug,” I said to the girl at the door. “Is he around?”

“What about?” she said with great disinterest.

“It’s a business thing.” I tried to look past her, into the house. “He told us he’d be here.”

“Are you the ones?” she said.

“Oh, yes, we’re the ones,” I bluffed.

As the girl gave us a once-over, her blue eyes snagged a bit on Harry, standing ragged and uneasy to my left, before reaching Ben. “Hey, I know you. Ben, right?”

“Hello, Lucille.”

“What happened to your face?”

“A boating accident,” said Ben.

“The
Second Chance
?”

“Yeah.”

“I hate that fucking boat.”

“That’s two of us,” said Ben.

“Which one of you is Moretti?”

“Ah, so we
are
the ones,” I said. So much for the element of surprise. “I’m Moretti. Is Doug at home?”

“Uh, why would you be here if he wasn’t?” she said with the singsong logic of the young. “I’m only supposed to let Mr. Moretti inside.”

“But these are my business associates. Doug told us all to meet him here. For a drink. You want a drink, Harry?”

“I’m a bit parched,” said Harry.

“It’s been,” I checked my watch, “almost twenty-seven minutes since Harry had a drink. He could use a glass of something wet, so long as it isn’t water.”

“I’m like a diesel leaking oil,” said Harry. “Got to top off the well ever few miles.”

“It’s either get him a drink or call him an ambulance,” I said. “I’m sure Doug won’t mind my friends coming, too.”

She listened without listening, just like my daughter listens, her eyes glossed with disinterest. “It’s only supposed to be you.”

We could have rushed her, the three of us, forced our way in, and that tactic had the benefit of feeding the anger that was coursing through me. But this Lucille was so young it seemed wrong, somehow, not to abide her. Derek was inside, Derek was waiting for me, which was disconcerting but positive nonetheless, because if Derek had been waiting for me to show, he obviously wanted to talk.

“Okay,” I said. “Ben and Harry, why don’t you go back to the room and wait on me.”

Ben shook his head before pulling me aside. “You don’t want to meet him alone,” he said.

“I don’t have much choice.”

“She can’t stop us. We’ll all go in together. I’ll have your back.”

“So we barge in and then what? We fight it out?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“If he’s waiting for me, then he wants to make a deal as much as I do. Remember, that’s what this is about. Go on back to the room with Harry. I’ll call you when we settle up and I’ll tell you where to bring the money.”

“It’s a mistake,” he said, and it probably was, but I had been angling for this meeting from the start and I wasn’t going to back
down now. This was the crucible on which everything would depend and, truth be told, I hadn’t doubted that I would have to do this alone. Ever since that night in the Grubbins house, I had always had to do everything alone.

“Go on back,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

I stood there as Ben and Harry headed to the truck. Harry waved weakly as he climbed in.

“All right, Lucille, let’s go see Dougie-boy.”

The girl led me through the wide door into the grand foyer of a house so over the top it would give Patriots Landing a complex. A gold chandelier hung from the ceiling two stories up; a gold-flecked medallion lay embedded in the marble floor. I followed her as she floated across the medallion on her bare feet, through a huge living room that looked like it had been decorated by Saddam Hussein, and then down a short flight of stairs into an overdone man cave. A billiards table, a poker table, a flatscreen on the wall, a granite-covered bar with swivel chairs that looked beyond the pool, past the hulking powerboat, into a wide swath of water.

And sitting at the bar, his back to me, was a broad-shouldered man with a gray ponytail hunched over a drink. He didn’t turn when we came into the room.